Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Sofia around 1900 [Sources for City and Art in SEE,...
Sources for City and Art in SEE, 1850-1950 continues: As I have noted in my article in the Ethnologia Balkanica of 2006 (access via CEEOL), there have been few relatively efforts to view the...
View ArticleCultural heritage in times of conflict: The monuments of Edirne in 1912/3...
In the 1913 volume of the Österreischische Monatssschrift für den Orient one finds a short note (“Die Adrianopler Moscheen”) on the fate of the grand 15th and 16th century mosques of Edirne after the...
View ArticleMore news from "Balkan Studies: quo vadis?"
A schedule for our upcoming workship (25 April, Vienna) has been posted here (along with the regular announcement). New on the roll are Wladimir Fischer (to whose paper I specifically look forward) and...
View ArticleHistorical preservation and communication problems in Constantinople in 1912...
Last year the Walls of Constantinople/Istanbul were (again) put on the World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Concerns as to their preservation had been voiced already a century ago,...
View ArticleArchitecture and aggression in Skopje
Yesterday (March 28, 2009) two groups of protesters clashed on Skopje's main square (video). One of which, curiously enough, was composed of students of architecture seeking to voice their concerns...
View ArticleBucharest Dog City
"Live in Bucharest even for a short while, and you'll soon become aware of two pressing problems: traffic jams and the massive stray dog population -- numbering more than 30,000, according to some...
View ArticleMacedonia sells building lots to alleviate budget deficit
In Macedonia, 460 state-owned building lots all over the country will be put up for sale in public bidding contests. Read the full article at BalkanInsight.com.
View ArticleSEE governments adopt heritage declaration
"The heads of eight Southeast European countries adopted a declaration Thursday (June 4th) on managing cultural heritage and making its protection a top priority. Issuing the joint statement were the...
View ArticleSkopje Main Square Pt. ?
Former Macedonian parliament member Mersel Biljali in an interview with SETimes about the government's plans for Skopje's main square (church, Alexander, more here):Biljali: We are going backward...
View ArticleMoving buildings in Bosnia
A rather odd event took place in Divic/Bosnia recently: That community's mosque had been destroyed during the war in 1992 and was now to be rebuilt. In the meantime (and not by mere coincidence),...
View ArticleCity, art, and architecture in Tito's Yugoslavia
The artistic and architectural output of Tito’s Yugoslavia seems to gradually claim some space in international academic media. In a recent special issue of the Journal of Architecture (Vol. 14, No. 1,...
View ArticleNew Belgrade: no man's land -> alternative capital -> housing without...
An interesting piece on New Belgrade by Ljilijana Blagojevic, author of Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941 (2003, reviews: 1,2,3; excerpt), can be found at the...
View ArticleThe Ottoman (re-)urbanization of SEE and the role of the March Lords
Cornucopia No. 41 features a summary of Heath Lowry's 2008 book (see posting below) by Caroline Finkel, stressing the importance of March Lord families in not only the conquest but the urbanization of...
View ArticleLowry, Ousterhout, and the earliest Ottoman fortress in Europe
The Princeton-based Ottomanist Heath Lowry has recently released two books significantly increasing our understanding of the early Ottoman expansion into Greece in the 14th century (1, 2). Not entirely...
View Article"Here once stood... Skopje"
Going through my old files, I rediscovered an enthralling text I once excerpted from a book the "Yugoslav Federal Secretariate for Information" published soon after the devastating earthquake in Skopje...
View ArticlePrishtina after the "internationals"
Jeroen van Marle, the "co-publisher" of the In Your Pocket Guide to Prishtina has contributed a piece to BalkanInsight, contemplating the future of the city past its "international" present: "The...
View ArticleZagreb as project
On H-Urban has recently appeared a review of the volume Project Zagreb: Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice (Eds. Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik; Barcelona [sic], 2007) by Brigitte Le Normand, who...
View ArticleMacedonia burning I
Last Wednesday a fire broke out in the St Jovan Bigorski monastery in W-Macedonia, not far from the border with Albania (cf. a short piece on BalkanInsight). This complex, visited by this blogger in...
View ArticleReiterer on Skopje, architecture, nationalism, etc.
Gabriele Reiterer of DerStandard has recently written a piece on "Architektur und nationale Mythen" in SEE in the context of the current "Balkanology" exhibition in Vienna. The text, worth reading, is...
View ArticleMacedonia burning II
Earlier this month the Macedonian Academy of Sciences has published its monumental, first "Macedonian Encyclopaedia", immediately sparking a furious response. The country's Albanian community is...
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